The perfect video for teaching an aspect of the the cultural optimism vs cultural pessimism within the globalisation debate – summarised below

Ygveny Morozov criticises the widespread assumption that the spread of the internet will  automatically lead to more democracy and fewer human rights abuses – the basic optimist assumption is that the spread of the internet and mobile technologies allows for such rapid spread of information and such a platform for informed dissent that things such as the Rwandan Genocide can no longer happen. This view does appear to be widespread, with numerous voices celebrating the role of new media in recent elections and people’s uprisings, such as those in the North of Africa and The Middle East. If we go with this assumption, then all we need to do to spread democracy is give more ipods to people in China and western values will automatically spread….

Of course this view is deterministic – we may get the impression that dictators are terrified of the internet, but this isn’t true – for dictators social networking sites, blogs and the like are useful tools to gather information – and for just straight forward social control.

For example in Thailand a site called ‘protect the King’ encourages people to report sites and blogs that they think will offend the king – which has lead to over 3000 sites being blocked; while in Saudi Arabia people are encouraged to surf the internet for sites that may offend ‘Saudi sensibilities’ and complain about them – if youtube gets a certain amount of criticisms then it will remove a video. (This later reminds me of a relatively recent Monbiot article in which he talks about organised campaigns, run by such groups as the tea party, to negatively evaluate left wing books on Amazon, giving them a poor rating). Morozov also points out that if you do get involved with a protest movement on twitter or FB then you are very traceable, more traceable than in the past…

Finally Morozov criticises the idea that young people online are all potential revolutionaries – we here a lot about cyber activism, but just remember that most of the internet is about entertainment and porn – it could be the case that young people are ‘digital captives’ rather than ‘digital renegades’.

Global Development – Globalisation – Optimism vs Pessimism